


Ask Nicely

by alientongue



Category: Xiaolin Showdown (Cartoon)
Genre: Canon-atypical violence, Gen, Mild Blood, Minor Injuries, chase being annoyed with jack doing his usual shit, jack doing his usual shit, me testing how to write these two interacting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-05
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-27 06:29:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13875114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alientongue/pseuds/alientongue
Summary: Jack gets punched in the face.





	Ask Nicely

**Author's Note:**

> i ended up liking Jack way more than expected, so naturally i had to write him hurt
> 
> inspired by [this](http://glibribs.tumblr.com/post/142395055015/xiaolin-showdown-dumpbut-mostly-jacks) art, i read "Chase punched me in the face" and it was like a lightbulb went on in my head

“Spicer.”

At the smooth, distinctly displeased voice, Jack whirled around in a momentary panic known only to teenagers in places they shouldn’t have been—the doors to Chase’s citadel—discovered by people they shouldn’t have bothered—most likely Chase, though in the split seconds before he turned his head he scraped together a hasty prayer that some sort of Shen Gong Wu had cropped up again, or that his Chameleon-Bot had paid him a surprise visit.

It would be far from the first time an imposter had caused him trouble, even if many of those times were from his own imposter, who he had built, and who he continued to rebuild because design that good couldn’t just go to waste. Just this once, he wouldn’t mind seeing that design, he added to his prayer. The smooth, distinctly displeased, distinctly Chase Young figure perched atop one of the rock spires lining the citadel entrance was a convenient reminder of his atheism.

Before he could do much more than goggle, the figure jumped, and with a light, skillful _thunk_ of a landing Chase Young, immortal prince of darkness, martial arts master, scary guy who turned into a dragon sometimes, was standing not a few feet away from Jack. _Towering_ might have been a better word for it, if not for the head of height advantage than for sheer presence. His coppery-gold, slit-pupiled eyes were narrowed under intense eyebrows, his muscular, gauntleted arms crossed over his chest, his voluminous black hair swaying in tasteful and unintentional dishevelment around his waist...

Jack was reminded of his reasons for watching the citadel at all. In an unrelated train of thought, he glued his eyes to one odd-shaped stone of many on the ground. “Hey,” he drew out, clasping his hands behind his back and beginning to rock on his heels, “Chase. Uh, good to see you, huh?” He scuffed at the odd stone with the toe of one boot.

“You’re loitering again.” Chase’s tone was as chilly and accusing as it’d been any of the other scoldings he’d deigned to give Jack, who gritted his teeth and fought not to redden. While the hero worship hadn’t run its course yet (and if he was being honest, he kind of doubted it ever would; Chase was strong and charismatic and _cool_ in a way that made his inner second-grader go starry-eyed), he could at least recognize and resent the immortal dragon lord’s annoying tendency to take a conversation, decide its destination in advance, and plow through any efforts to steer it otherwise.

He’d take a _good morning_ , a _how’re you doing_ , a _cannibalized any other dragons lately to maintain your own eternal youth_ and pay it back with a _what are you doing in my sanctuary, pest_. No wonder the guy had lived with only his bunch of oversized cats for so many centuries.

Falling back on a personal specialty, Jack feigned hurt. It was easier than it should’ve been. “Loitering? C’mon, I just wanted to stop by and see you! Thanks to that door,” and he withdrew a hand from behind his back to point at the veritable barricade of bolted hardwood, “I’ve gotta wait out here.” It was a truth enough without mentioning that Chase’s various pets made entrance via helipack lethal, or at the very least exceedingly, continuously painful.

One sharp eyebrow rose on Chase’s forehead. “As I’ve told you many times not to do in the past week alone.” His hair shifted, locks of it spilling over his shoulders, as he tipped his head sideways and back in appraisal. “Have you thought that that door is there for a reason? That I want you stumbling through my personal residence when, and only when, my plans require your presence?” Judging from the perfect vertical lines of his constricted pupils, he was thoroughly unimpressed.

“Um,” Jack said, doing a little less feigning. “I was checking to see if my presence is required. In your plan and all. You never know with the...internet connection.” For as much as he knew, Chase’s citadel might have passed up modern tech for magic, like so many other utilities he’d have thought an evil icon would put in the effort to install, and he was currently bluffing himself into his daily corner. “Gets all flaky sometimes, y’know? A real pain in the neck.” He punctuated the last remark with a hand over his own nape, wiping at a sudden sweat with the fabric of his gloves.

“And you have room to talk,” Chase observed, not _entirely_ drily but enough so to make Jack’s brow furrow.

“Yep.” In his long, frequently thankless pursuit of evil, Jack had learned when to take the path of least resistance. Raising both hands in a half-shrug, half open-palmed gesture, he tried again, “So, about that plan! Am I—”

“No.”

He blinked, not exactly fazed but verging on disgruntled. “Oh. I mean, okay.” On his first and last fourth grade field trip, he’d bugged the museum database to transfer their documentation on Chase Young, down to exact quotes, onto his PDA and had gotten impressively far in the process until IT staff realized why he’d been so absorbed in the device rather than the tour. The curt, cool authority of the voice he’d given up field trips for was slightly less enthralling turned against him. His gesture sagged, hands sinking before he planted them on his hips instead. “Still! I’m already here, so...anything I can work on? Machines?” Kicking away the odd stone still besides his foot, he chanced eye contact. “A microwave for your soup?”

Chase looked as most people did when (on the rare occasion that he felt like sharing his midnight snack) Jack offered them microwaved soup. His fingers tapped in a series of metallic _ticks_ against his bracers. “Spicer,” he said, looking down the considerable bridge of his nose, “I’ve noticed a few things about you.” Jack had barely perked up at the statement when he moved, taking a single step and closing much of the distance between them in the process. “Your tenacity, for one. The willingness to run back after fleeing and stand up after being beaten down.” For words he’d expect to hear only from the Chase in his head, their timbre hadn’t warmed any, nor had their accompanying expression.

Jack blushed anyway. “What can you expect, I guess—”

“The willingness,” Chase continued, “to trespass after warned.” He unfolded his arms, letting one hang at his side, extending the other and laying a hand on Jack’s shoulder. It rested lightly, not holding him in place so much as suggesting it. “You have an interesting kind of bravery to shy from injury and ignore my advice in the same breath.”

“Uh.” That had to have been a threat, but it was hard to process through the light, cold weight of metal, his eyes darting to the gauntlet’s blurred engravings in his peripheral vision. While Jack had done his share of touching, grabbing an arm or hand or shoulder when things got too hectic for Chase to swat him away, Chase had seemed loathe to so much as brush him. Still seemed, if the tight purse of his lips spoke of anything, but all the same, he’d touched him. “Thanks?” Skin prickling under his trenchcoat, he shifted his feet, making an effort to turn his attention back to Chase’s face.

The look in his reptilian eyes was too impassive for a glare. “How many times is it now that you’ve disturbed me in my own home?” Chase’s hand hadn’t closed in the slightest, fingers still lax, but the pressure of his armored palm against Jack’s shoulder blade built just enough to be perceptible.

“Thirteen,” Jack answered readily. “I think. I’m not good with keeping track, but,” he glanced briefly aside in strained concentration, “there’s this week, and I was repairing Robo-Jack last week, so that leaves the time before…” He trailed off, partially in thought and partially in the sight of Chase drawing his free arm back in a careful, fluid motion. His hand had curled into a fist easily half the size of Jack’s face and several times more solid-looking.

“Hey, uh.” Jack swallowed, abruptly feeling far over a head shorter than the paragon of evil fixing him with a stony look. “You’re not mad, are you? You’re not going to punch me or something?” He gave Chase his own look, the too-wide smile Wuya called his _concentrated grovel_.

With perfect, measured form, Chase punched him in his right eye.

Pain exploded across his face, his world dissolving into a buzz of color and ringing in his ears, and then he landed hard on the curled tails of his coat, which did absolutely nothing to cushion the rock underneath. His teeth clacked together with the force, catching his tongue between them; the smell of copper was joined by taste. Chase’s knuckles hadn’t stopped at his eye, the size of his fist enough to crush against Jack’s nose as well.

Something warm and wet trickled over his upper lip, and reflexively, he licked at it. _Water,_ he thought first, at the lack of taste. _Blood, you idiot,_ he thought second, _your mouth is full of it_. His nose stung with blunt, numb pain that made his left eye water. The right was already dripping tears, fighting to outdo his nose with its best impression of being filled with needles. Blinking rapidly did nothing to dissuade it.

Jack stared up through the blurred vision lent by one eye swelling shut and failed to make a noise. It was only when the looming green-and-black shape inched forward that he squalled, scrambling back and tripping on his coattails in the process. His face burned with a combination of humiliation and fresh bruises—clapping an unsteady hand to it, feeling for the hopefully-still-straight bridge of his nose, his fingertips grazed the crooked line of a cut on his cheek. From the edges of the gauntlet, most likely. Through the pulsing hurt, he tried to remember his last tetanus shot.

Chase’s arms had crossed back over his chest. “Get out,” he said, tone the same chilly reprimand it’d always been.

“Geez,” Jack shot back in a pained, nasally hiss, finally shoving himself upright and stumbling back. The back of his glove only smeared fluid over his face in diluted streaks with his scrubbing. “Alright, I’m going, I’m going! I got it the first time!” His cut tongue had swollen, stinging in the air and misshaping his words as he spoke, and his nose and eye fared no better, hot and throbbing in a way that he might have snickered at if it hadn’t hurt so much. “You didn’t have to be such a—”

Chase took a step forward. Jack reached immediately for the trigger of his helipack.

**Author's Note:**

> it is so weird writing a teenager without swearing
> 
> tbh i based chase's lair on s2 e11 and only realized that the outside layout changes in later episodes afterwards, so i guess this is in an au where the design stays the same


End file.
